(Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will reshuffle his cabinet in the coming weeks as a handful of ministers have decided not to run for office in the next election, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The four ministers expected to leave cabinet – Carla Qualtrough, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Dan Vandal and Filomena Tassi – do not hold major portfolios, and for now there are no signs that Trudeau plans to make any major changes to his frontline bank.
But with discontent growing in his group over the Liberal Party’s prolonged slump in the polls, the planned departures only add to Trudeau’s troubles as he prepares for an election that could happen any time next year.
The cabinet change is not expected to happen anytime soon and could even wait until after the U.S. election, according to officials who spoke on condition they not be named.
Other ministers have already resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet. In recent months, Seamus O’Regan has quit his job as Labor Secretary because he has no intention of running for re-election. Pablo Rodriguez left as transport minister to run for the leadership of Quebec’s provincial Liberal party.
Trudeau is under pressure to show his caucus a plan to erode the dominant poll lead of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has led by about 20 percentage points for more than a year now.
There have been numerous media reports over the past week that some Liberal lawmakers plan to challenge Trudeau at next week’s caucus meeting, calling on him to resign as leader or cause a bigger uproar at the people around him. The Liberals have not yet waged a major advertising campaign against Poilievre, and Trudeau has not made any changes to his senior staff or to the most senior positions in the cabinet, such as finance and foreign affairs.
Trudeau has repeatedly said he doesn’t want an election until the fall of 2025. But after his main partner in parliament broke a power-sharing deal last month, early elections have become more likely.
Still, 50% of Canadians would prefer the next federal election to be held in 2025, while 30% want it to happen as soon as possible, according to a recent poll for Bloomberg News by Nanos Research Group. About 12% have no preference, 7% want to vote sometime in 2024 and 1% are not sure.
Nanos surveyed 1,058 Canadians by phone and online between September 29 and October 2. The margin of error is within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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